FilmDoctor® Product Series

FilmDoctor® is the ultimate software for physical characterization, engineering, and optimization of arbitrary structured surfaces! It enables you not only to exactly dimension but also physically evaluate surface or contact measurements in order to mechanically characterize the surfaces. This is absolutely necessary for engineering or optimization of any surface by means of physical modeling and simulation. Of course, FilmDoctor® is equipped with such functionalities as well. Thus, FilmDoctor® allows you to cut time-consuming and costly testing for coating engineering or optimization on the one hand and to increase the certainty of your durability prediction significantly on the other hand.

Application-oriented design or optimization of surface structures requires appropriate dimensioning and physical analysis of contact measurements for mechanic characterization. The ultimate FilmDoctor® Studio allows you to perform all these tasks.

Features

The features covered below are features of the model on which this product series is based. Therefore, they may differ from the capabilities of the individual editions as they are not all completely implemented in all editions.

Supported Material Structures

scheme of complex coating structure [?]

The software[?] allows you both to analyze the following surface structures among others by evaluating mechanical contact measurements, and to model them for simulation purposes:

multi-layer coatings (up to 100 layers)

thin films (theoretically down to 1 angstroem*)

thick films (theoretically unlimited*)

with intrinsic/thermal stresses and gradients of it (functional)

laminate structures

composites

nano-particle-enhanced coatings (nanotubes, fullerenes, ...)

inclusions and defects not only within layers but also at interfaces

superlattice

homogeneous monolithic bulk materials (e.g. substrate only)

* With regard to measurement analysis it practically depends on capabilities (e.g. the resolution and noise floor) of your measurement instrument.

Supported Contact or Load Conditions

scheme of complex contact measurement [?]

Among others, the following conditions and effects can be taken into account not only for the evaluation of mechanical surface measurements, but also for the modeling of complex load or contact situations of the real application by our software[?]:

tribology tests like wear tests and friction tests (pin-on-disc, ball-on-disc and so on)

each also in high temperature range

and many more

Mechanical Characterization

The most important aim of mechanical characterization is the evaluation of generic material properties, which are independent of measurement conditions (like material structure of the sample, maximum indentation depth, initial and final load, velocity etc.). Hence, it is necessary to take all these measurement conditions into account to evaluate such measurement properly. That is why we have extended the classic Oliver&Pharr method for such conditions. This Oliver&Pharr method extended for layered materials (Oliver&Pharr for Coatings) enables you to calculate - among others - the following generic material properties[?]:

real Young's modulus of each layer or the substrate (elastic modulus)

yield strength of each layer or the substrate

Poisson's ratio of each layer or the substrate

intrinsic, thermal, or residual stresses of each layer or the substrate